Google+ update adds subtle tweaks, enhancements

Google is trying to keep up with Facebook, rolling out improved photo editing …

The new Google notifications drop-down menu contains more info on your most recent updates, letting you know whether clicking to check them out is a waste of time

Google

Not to be outdone by its peers, Google announced a series of product updates to its social network on Monday morning, catching up to a recent slew of social network makeovers.

Most of the updates are minor tweaks, aimed at refining the company's product in response to user feedback—and also after eyeing development at Facebook and Twitter, no doubt.

Do you have a few Google+ friends who are obnoxiously prolific in their status updates? The new "graphic equalizer" essentially sticks a volume knob on every user, allowing you to adjust your exposure to annoying updates accordingly. So, if you'd rather not read up-to-the-minute coverage of your pal's sick kitty, slide the equalizer button to the left and watch the offending updates dwindle (or disappear completely, if you're really that tired of them).

Taking a cue from Facebook's highly developed photo sharing system, Google revamped the photo viewing features of Google+. In the new version, the lightbox viewing environment gets a significant overhaul, allowing users to view pictures in full-screen mode, while one-by-one comments slowly populate the periphery.

Photo tagging is also now easier, and the traditional comment sidebar (the one that appears when not in full-screen lightbox mode) is now backlit with white, making it easier to read what friends have written. Finally, Google gives users a host of simple photo editing tools, so cropping, adding text, and overlaying goofy graphics (like antlers or santa hats) is fairly simple.

Google+ Update: New Photo Lightbox

The updates come amid a veritable renaissance of social media product enhancements, as Facebook and Twitter have recently rolled out major aesthetic changes as well. Last week, Facebook finally rolled out its "Timeline" feature to users around the world —it's a near-complete visual overhaul of how Facebook presents a user's online activity and update history.

Similarly, Twitter reworked its own user interface in a recent unveiling. Twitter's goal? To reduce confusion around some of its more heady product features (just try explaining what a hashtag is to your grandma, and you'll know what the company is looking to address).

At first glance, Google's most recent tweaks seem somewhat minor compared to other social media overhauls. But do consider that Google+ launched only six months ago, and it's still the new kid on the block within the larger social media sphere. The Google+ team is still feeling its way around what users want from the service, and how to slowly build improvements that aren't jarring.

In some respects, it could even be an advantage to hit the social game as late as Google has. The company has watched Facebook make a series of gaffes over the course of its development, as various updates have been met with extreme user backlash and privacy concerns. From Google's perspective, incremental changes—deliberately doled out in response to user feedback—could serve to avoid unfortunate missteps.

While improving the average Joe's Google+ experience is obviously key, Google is also trying to ramp up its appeal to the business crowd, offering a number of tweaks that make it easier for brands to manage their online expressions. In a perk for larger organizations, businesses can now add multiple managers to their Google+ pages. This means the burden of updating a brand's page doesn't fall on the shoulders of a single individual. Further, page managers can see an aggregate view of how many users are interacting with the business page.

Google+ Update: Making Improvements to Pages

Google's business-focused improvements also follow similar changes at Facebook and Twitter. In February, Facebook launched a major overhaul of its "Pages" for businesses, giving page managers more granular control over what content visitors see, as well as the ability to interact with individual users as a brand page. Twitter also launched its own brand page enhancements, allowing businesses to pin content to the top of their brand page streams, and giving managers more creative control over the layout of the pages themselves.

As the social media sphere continues to heat up with more entrants to the scene every day, we expect continued enhancements and features to come. Our hope, however, is that the products aren't "enhanced" to the point of being cumbersome, counterintuitive, or no longer useful.

They really need to find a way to integrate posts to both google + and facebook. As it stands if I want to post a something to my friends, my go to is facebook. I'm not about to redo that for my 5 g+ friends too. But if it was integrated, maybe more people would join cause, well, why not.

Yeah, at this point, I would concur. They had a window to overcome network effect and it was at first launch. That window's closed. I hope they'll learn from this that not everything can be perpetually in beta...

Now that they're un-fucking the admin options for branded accounts we'll probably try and be more active as Ars on G+. I'm not sure I'm going to keep updating my personal account though, I've kind of stopped bothering and can't say I've noticed all that much.

It's not that G+ is dead, I get plenty of comments on things, and I probably have more actual human beings following me there than on Twitter, but the actual core group of friends I care about just isn't there, and that's tough to overcome.

I prefer Google+ to facebook, but I still use facebook because not many people I know are willing to make the move. They are far too invested with all of their pictures, "friends," games, and other shit.

It's not that G+ is dead, I get plenty of comments on things, and I probably have more actual human beings following me there than on Twitter, but the actual core group of friends I care about just isn't there, and that's tough to overcome.

I'm largely in the same boat.

My friends/fam are mostly on Facebook, which means I have <zero social networking connectivity with most of the people that I actually know in person.

Yes, some people do. I've noticed a lot of science bloggers and scientists I follow on twitter or Google Reader are using Google+. Granted, a lot of the content that they post (links, blog posts, etc) are the same, but Google+ provides a good mechanism for discussing those topics.

It might not be the social network powerhouse that Facebook is, but it has its uses.

I'm happy with this update, because I've been wanting to control how much of a circle's posts appear in my stream for a long time. I follow some photographers, and sometimes they just drown out everything else with their photo posts. It's nice to be able to scale that down so that I can give more prominence to the more interesting science stories I want to hear about or discuss.

My first thought was as above: I don't care. But it occurs to me that the signal to noise ratio on G+ is a hell of a lot higher than on Facebook, which always seems on the verge of becoming the next Reddit. Maybe that's worth something.

It still feels like they're following, though. Timeline was a very clever update that should have been Google's. As Facebook continues to improve, it's becoming harder to manufacture reasons to bother with G+.

Nope, haven't found a reason to G+ since getting an account. I'm glad they're trying, if only to spur on Facebook. At some point they need to do something to deal with a lack of users assuming they really want to take on Facebook...

It's not going to be an evolutionary update that accomplishes that though.

Yes he is. If by standard. Google deliver better protection for your data than Facebook.

In the end? It breaks down to:

Google - An ad company going social company.Facebook - A social company going ad company.

Obviously. Facebook is the worst. I could always put you a link to open wide the Bs going in this whole thread. Obvious pro Anti-Google+. Wondering why The Verge got more engagement on its Google+ page than Facebook...

Yeah, at this point, I would concur. They had a window to overcome network effect and it was at first launch. That window's closed. I hope they'll learn from this that not everything can be perpetually in beta...

I'm not sure the Google+ 3 month beta was the problem.

I think more people would be interested in Google+ if they weren't already on Facebook.

Some people switched completely... and some will check Google+ in addition to Facebook.

But Google really should have launched this thing a few years ago during the great social networking boom.

I prefer Google+ to facebook, but I still use facebook because not many people I know are willing to make the move. They are far too invested with all of their pictures, "friends," games, and other shit.

Doesn't sound like you like your "friends". Make a clean break, delete the Facebook account

Yes he is. If by standard. Google deliver better protection for your data than Facebook.

In the end? It breaks down to:

Google - An ad company going social company.Facebook - A social company going ad company.

Obviously. Facebook is the worst. I could always put you a link to open wide the Bs going in this whole thread. Obvious pro Anti-Google+. Wondering why The Verge got more engagement on its Google+ page than Facebook...

Well... Google+ is full of photographers and tech people. No wonder a tech blog gets more engagement.

Another example is that from day one and ongoing they still pester me, on the rare times I log in these days, to identify new “friends”. What can only accurately be described as a nag screen that takes over my phone screen, gets right up in my grill about it, when what I want to do is check up on what my friends have to say? Holy crap UX on a stick. Google Inc. can be tools, don’t get me wrong. But there are degrees…

If I may generalize, it seems that the people who have really put in the time to dive into and understand G+'s intricacies say they prefer G+ over FB. This leads me to believe that I probably would too, I just don't have the time to sit down and go through all its aspects. It really doesn't help that only about 10% of my FB contacts have G+ accounts. I'm hoping that one day, most if not all of my friends will be on G+ at which point I'll delete my FB. If for no other reason than a change of scenery.

Take a look at guys like Wil Wheaton, who uses G+ with the same capacity as his own blog. He could probably not have done that with Facebook and have gained the same attention among Facebook users.

Notice the UI differences between Facebook and G+, which is like night and day. G+ is much easier on the eyes. Facebook is a madhouse next to it.

Privacy concerns, look through the G+ settings, which are simple and intuitive, compared to Facebook. Then go to the privacy center and read about it or visit their direct link to dataliberation.org to get your data out.

If you are worried about ad tracking, then Facebook and G+ are probably about equal, but then you shouldn't be using Facebook either.

I quite like Google+, but as others have said, all my friends and family are on Facebook. The thing is though that none of my friends or family care about the same stuff that I care about, they don't even understand what I'm on about if I start rambling about copyright laws or tablet development or such. Thus I've made the decision to just keep all the totally random crap on Facebook, only shared with my friends and not even their friends and in Finnish and my ramblings world public on Google+ in English. Not that I believe anyone will care about reading my ramblings there either, but oh well.

I see G+ as different to Facebook in that I only have irl friends on FB but most of my activity on G+ is Twitter-like; following people who I think will be saying something that I will find interesting - mainly techy geeky stuff but there is a lot of photography and politics discussion that goes on as well. On top of that, G+ also gives you the ability to make it a Facebook replacement if you want (and can get your friends on there!).

G+ has a danger of being jack of all trades, master of none but apart from the actual user count being higher on other services it currently seems to be pretty good at all of them. You have the privacy of controlling which circles you are sharing with, you have built-in IM, you have videoconferencing (Facetime/Skype equivalent now it is also available in the mobile app), games (not my thing), Picasa + image editing (+ instant upload from the mobile app), Youtube semi-integration, Gmail semi-integration (only the useful bits so far imo) and Google search (+Maps, +Docs +otherGoogleProduct) is pretty ferking close by. G+ isn't trying to be a social network. It's trying to be a web2.9* portal for all your Internet-y needs... As long as those needs are supported by Google ads!

G+ isn't going to die a terrible death like the poorly thought-out Buzz did. It's going to be there. Stalking in the shadows. Directing users to Google content. It might never overtake Facebook unless Facebook implodes, but I don't see G+ being a failure any time soon either.

*Are we still on web2.0, or are we on to 3.0 now? I saw someone in HR reference web3.0 recently and I scoffed but then I scoffed when 2.0 was first used as well.

Google+ is pretty good, but the truth is I have only a handful of friends over there, compared to a majority of my friends on Facebook. I love the Android integration, especially for photos, and the option to edit photos right on Google+, though it's more suited for sharing casual pics than for any sort of serious photo work, is a killer feature for me.

I've gotten tired of Facebook. Too much damn information. Part of it is my fault - I've added most people who've sent me invites and I know personally, even if they're just acquaintances. But I think Google+ is refreshing, and competition in social networks certainly can't hurt, right?

These new updates are ok, I guess. Mostly aimed at companies, which I understand since support for company pages was weak. Now I'm hoping for greater integration with the web at large, as well as many apps that allow you to share on Facebook, Tumbler, Twitter, Reddit, you name it... except for Google+!

Maybe if they made a WP7 app or a non-shit mobile site, I would care more.

Question: are there any Google native apps for WP7? I ask because I've noticed that Microsoft has been making a number of apps for iOS that they don't seem to be sharing with Android.

Interesting, that.

Microsoft has six apps out for Android: Lync, Halo WayPoint, Bing, MSN News India, Hotmail and Microsoft Tag. I believe SkyDrive is coming soon as well.

Google has a measly one for search, which is better to go to the mobile site anyway because, surprise surprise, the app is just chrome around a webview. But then location based search doesn't work there and maps fail. Google's also blocking Microsoft from making a decent YouTube app.

Ars has a nice presence over on G+ (nearly 400 Arsians in my G+ circle), and the discussion can get quite lively. I don't understand how people say nothing/nobody of value is on that network. I find it more interesting and more involving than Facebook, to be honest. It's all about who you add to your circles.

For those confused over whether Google+ is used or not and by whom, allow me to give you a mental reference:

Myspace: 12 year olds and those with similar maturity.

Facebook: College kids, middle-aged people desperate to catch up with old high school acquaintances to show off how well they haven't done and the idiotic ME TOO! crowd who goes "Well, everyone's on here and I really want to "keep in touch" with my kids and grandkids in college..." etc.

Google+: People with more than half a brain.

Hope that clears it up, best wishes.

PS: If this sounds like trolling, it isn't. I'm just sick of the "Google+ is teh dedzor" crowd and the jackasses who, because they are sheeple and refuse to set the trend, believe that it's just "not being used by anyone."

I've walked away from Facebook completely - it was boring, insecure and generally speaking - crap on a website that was slowly transforming into another Myspace.

By posting on Facebook that I was leaving it and switching to Google+, my reasons for it and a departure date (As well as actually deleting my Facebook account completely) I was able to get about half a dozen people to try it out - and most of them have stayed - out of the ones who stayed, several brought more people along.

On Facebook I had 12 "friends" of which, half of them were through my wife, most of them I seldom spoke with - ever.

On Google+ I have over 20 actual friends that I talk to on a fairly regular basis. My conversations have actually improved greatly as well.

I'd say overall, Google+ has been a very positive tool for my social networking.

Google+ is pretty good, but the truth is I have only a handful of friends over there, compared to a majority of my friends on Facebook. I love the Android integration, especially for photos, and the option to edit photos right on Google+, though it's more suited for sharing casual pics than for any sort of serious photo work, is a killer feature for me.

I've gotten tired of Facebook. Too much damn information. Part of it is my fault - I've added most people who've sent me invites and I know personally, even if they're just acquaintances. But I think Google+ is refreshing, and competition in social networks certainly can't hurt, right?

These new updates are ok, I guess. Mostly aimed at companies, which I understand since support for company pages was weak. Now I'm hoping for greater integration with the web at large, as well as many apps that allow you to share on Facebook, Tumbler, Twitter, Reddit, you name it... except for Google+!

Anita Man wrote:

redacted so as not to promote trash post

How is this not trolling? Ars needs a banhammer...

OK, I admit it could be perceived as trolling by Google fans, but it succinctly sums up how the majority of people (Americans at least) feel about G+. It's too late to add these features, they should've been there from the start when there was a small amount of momentum. A lot of my facebook friends tried to migrate over, but gave up after a couple of months because none of the other friends did. Circles and hangouts wasn't enough of an improvement over facebook. Facebook is like Visa credit cards. It's awfully hard for a new player, even paypal to make a move in to payments that bypass Visa/Mastercard.

FYI, the people defending Facebook are just too lazy and scared, to move to G+.

G+ is better... sorry, it's very simple.

I use both right now, but when i want an opinion from my tech friends or I want to make a post related to gaming, I post on G+. When I'm trying to reach out to my non-techy local friends or family, I use Facebook.

Eventually, we can hopefully get more people on G+. I have a couple random family members and non-tech friends on G+, but IMO I'm surprised at their perseverance, because it's doubtful they know many on the network.

Way to generalize. Let me try. No one cares about you. Am I doing it right?

In both cases, you are right. Also in both cases, it's not necessary to make a post to ars when something or someone that no one cares about makes subtle tweaks.

You'll notice that one thing lacking from this thread of comments is any discussion of what those subtle tweaks are, or how they help G+ in any way. It's all trolls, top to bottom. It would be astute to notice that the features introduced to G+ are all derivatives of Facebook features, and that this update simply moves G+ closer to what Facebook already is. It is clear that both Facebook and G+ are trying to be everything to everyone, they are both evolving to the same point. In the end, the only difference will be which company owns the rights to sell your information to advertisers, and which network most of your friends are on.

This thread is full of comments that basically reflect:a) "I don't care to use this service, there is no interest, this news is irrelevant"b) "G+ is much better than facebook. I use G+, therefore I am better than every facebook user. All who have not migrated are a combination of lazy, stupid, and scared."